Wednesday, 28 November 2012

Pains and needles

You know when you get back to Cluj or I guess anywhere in Romania. Not only are there as many superstitions as there are churches, which is a lot; there is also as much alternative medicine as there is mainstream health care. I went to an acupuncture session with a friend. As I also had a sore knee doctor Edi gave me a quick diagnostic once over as well as treating my friend. He looked at my tongue, found some pressure points that were agonisingly painful and told me that the root of my problem lay way back in my youth. Not only a wayward family relationship that needs to be remedied but an important decision that took the course of my life in one direction when my instinct told me something else. My instinct is starting to say 'enough' apparently, hence the increasing frequency of my knee getting sore. This style of history taking and diagnosis feels more like a repeat of the session I once had with an ayurvedic healer in India than anything I ever got from the UK's National Health Service. I can't fault the precision of the insight. I just wonder what my tongue actually looked like to tell such tales.